


Chicken

by Miazaz



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Fade to Black, Gay Chicken, M/M, Percy is there in spirit, it's all fun and games until someone gets laid, just about everyone makes an appearance - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 18:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9135511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miazaz/pseuds/Miazaz
Summary: Grog ignored the first thirty or so ass-swats, so when he suddenly turns over his shoulder to pin Vax with a strange, confused squint, it throws the half-elf off about five paces.Or, Grog decides he'll play whatever game Vax is playing.





	

Grog ignored the first thirty or so ass-swats, so when he suddenly turns over his shoulder to pin Vax with a strange, confused squint, it throws the half-elf off about five paces.

“Go get ‘em, sexy,” he says, flashing a grin and giving him a thumbs up, trying to silence the warning bells going off in his head, telling him to run, evade, dodge, _go_ , because shit’s about to _change_ , and when he gets a smirk in response and a nod everything gets louder.

“Awright then,” Grog drawls, taking a deep breath and throwing his chest out, shoulders squared and arms flexing tight. If he didn’t know better, he’d say Grog was preening.

(He doesn’t know better. At least, he doesn’t think he does.)

Grog makes such violent work of the thing, Vax retroactively can’t identify what it was that attacked them in the first place. It’s off-putting enough, but then Grog hails a thumbs-up with a satisfied smirk and all the alarms in his mind stop screaming to collect into a sigh of relief. Everything’s just the way it was.

(Until it isn’t.)

 

* * *

 

The mansion allows for a privacy he didn’t realized he missed from the Keep until he had it back again.

Not that certain members of the party ever utilized their rooms (much to Scanlan’s frequent, lengthy lecturing), preferring instead to pass out wherever they fell instead. Finding Grog is usually a 40/60 split between the dining room (where he isn’t) or the training pit in the basement (where he happens to be), where Vax is hugging the shadows to enter.

He’s easy to spot, the giant heap of a man curled out in a starfish splay on the floor just by the sand, and Vax feels a band of pressure lift from his chest, just a little.

He slips from the shadows, settles down next to him to sit, brings his hand up to rest just on his clavicle, fingers firm into his throat to feel his pulse, and with each beat the weight eases off his shoulders, just a little.

Twice in two weeks and both because of ~~( _Percy_ )~~ the de Rolo and his arrogant, know-it-all short-sight.

“If Pike hadn’t been here…” he can’t bring himself to say it, can’t bring himself to think it, not even here where no one has to know.

“I begged Her. If she had…”

The slow draw of Grog’s breathing is ripped in the heavy exhale of a shaking sigh, the soft shift of feathers as he leans down.

“We have your back, you know this. Today, tomorrow. We’ll take down the entire herd if we have to, just as long as you stay with us.”

Grog’s skin is warm, hot, despite the slow, easy pulse under his hand, and he lets himself have this, just for a minute, just for now, where no one else can see, and slides his weight down the side of him to lay out just next-to, touch his ear to the space under his collarbone and listen to the thrum of a heartbeat he felt under his fingertips.

(He hasn’t done this since he was a child, not easily, like this, not even to his sister, not even with just how much he’s _wanted_ nothing else, just in case, _just in case_.)

He doesn’t know when it happens or what he did; if he moved wrong or sighed too loud, but he finds himself crushed in the weight of a barbarian arm, all of Grog’s dead weight across his side, the other arm pulling him up against his chest in a tight grip.

“I already told Pike, Moody, but I ain’t goin’ nowhere. Jus’ gonna have a little chat tomorrow, and go kill us a dragon later. Now shut the fuck up and go to sleep.”

He shifts again, rolling his body into Vax’s, wrapping up around him entirely.

(If the way he digs his fingers into Grog’s skin bothers him, he doesn’t acknowledge it and if the hold on his shoulders feels more bracing than captive he won’t say, either.)

Dawn hits his senses like instinct, the body around him slack in sleep, giving him just enough room to slip away upstairs before anyone else wakes up.

Just in case.

 

* * *

 

The robe tried to kill him. The robe Gilmore -- _not Gilmore, not Shaun_ \-- gave him before trying to poison him with a knife to the gut -- _the Rakshasa, wearing Shaun’s face, the demon_ \-- and take his skin with it.

Percival, smug, beautiful Percival saved his hide (literally, which he hates to admit even more), but that left him naked in the basement in the death altar under the bastard’s castle (where he almost _died_ ! From _poison_ !) and Grog, Grog decides to take his next stand _then,_ because of _course_ he did.

And maybe, okay, he invited it with the butt-print in oil on his door but it’s _cold_ down here, dammit, and his _sister_ is here too, for fuck’s sake. And Keyleth, too, _with Shaun_ , because his shame just wasn’t complete until now.

Grog towel-whips his ass and the sting-smart of it yanks his thoughts back to the situation at hand.

(Which is that Shaun, the actual, _glorious_ wizard, is here looking at him like a work of art, his sister is screaming at the goliath to give him some damn clothes, Keyleth looks like she’s going to explode beneath her hands and Grog’s booming laugh is echoing through the cavern.)

This will not go unpunished.

Vax’ildan will remember this.

 

* * *

 

 

“Come on, I’m tense. Let’s _go_.”

It’s the small victories, especially these days, especially here, and Grog turning bright red and speechless is as big of a tiny victory as he can claim right now, even as he blatantly ignores the gleam in his eyes as he drags him off to a corner of the room just out of sight of the guards, pins him up the wall like he could keep him there.

Keyleth’s done something and chaos has descended, which just gives him the advantage to yank him down and affix his mouth to Grog’s neck, just where it meets his jaw and the beat of his pulse there, and _suck_ , teeth and tongue against skin, fast and brutal in the small window he knows he has.

When he pulls away, smirking and looking for the blush, he’s almost disappointed to find it missing, a clenched-teeth smirk waiting for him instead.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have done that,” he growls, but it’s cut with the vigor he usually saves for a fight, bright and joy and an edge that _really_ should have him  agreeing, but he just can’t find it in himself to do so.

“It looks good on you,” he laughs, a playful slap across his arm, because Grog still hasn’t thrown him across the room (out of the window) or punched him, and the game is still fun.

(As long as he’s willing to play.)

“Oh, _thanks_ Grog!” He stretches his body out, hands over his head with a happy sigh, “I feel loose as a goose!”

He swears, _swears_ he hears softly behind him, “not yet you don’t”, but, well, his hearing’s never been as good as Vex’ahlia’s and he might have gotten it wrong.

(Denial’s gotten him this far.)

 

* * *

 

To be fair, he started it. Well, no, it’s not exactly fair, because _he started it_ , so he should be _in control of it_ , and he’s _not_ , because he never _could_ get a bead on this guy, so why he thought he’d be able to control this is almost beyond him. He can’t even control his relationship with Vex’ahlia and he knows her better than any living creature on the planet.

(The difference there being, of course, that Vex’ahlia’s never ending well of surprises makes him proud, warm and deep in his chest, makes him think maybe she’ll be okay. _This_ never ending clusterfuck of insanity is stressful as hell, and, okay, maybe a _little_ hot. A little. A flea-dick amount. Maybe.)

( _Maybe_.)

 

* * *

 

 

His hips ache from where Grog has his hands clamped down, and he knows he’ll bruise, and is instantly grateful for Scanlan’s mansion and separate rooms.

The little noise of pain in the back of his throat doesn’t make him let go, but rather makes him yank backward and down harder with the grip on his lower back and a staccato sweep to his feet.

(Frankly, Vax is _personally_ offended at his body’s failure to dodge on instinctive principle, but Grog’s tongue is _incredibly_ distracting, and the sudden lurch of the room around him just makes him clutch at him harder, makes Grog drink him in deeper and, okay, he can work with this.)

“Oi, Big Guy,” he breathes, once his constitution gives him the fuck up and he has to wrench his face away. “Promise you’ll respect me in the morning?”

Grog starts in confusion, amused smirk on his lips and a furrow to his brow. “I don’ respect you now. The fuck you mean ‘in the mornin’?”

His laugh is punctuated with the clap of his giant hand up between Vax’s legs before giving him what he thinks (hopes) he thinks must be a playful squeeze, but is near breathtakingly painful, even through the Death Walker’s Ward. As he’s dropped and Grog walks away, Vax feels his throat go tight.

The fucker’s winning.

 

* * *

 

“I feel like… I feel like it’s makin’ me fall in love with the first person I -- Vaaaaax!”

 Posture easy, grin sharp and a half-wink that would make his sister proud, and Vax just drawls, “Oh, come on. You don’t wanna fuck with this.”

 Grog pauses, then chuckles to himself, taking the mask off. “No, you’re right.”

 “Well,” he hums. “Maybe a little.” And he glances at the other man through his lashes, brows raised.

He can hear the gears clanking if he listens closely -- rusty and awkward, but trying, and he isn’t surprised that he doesn’t get a rejoinder, but Grog has absolutely connected at least two dots.

(He doesn’t know which two. He doesn’t know if Grog knows which two except that look in his eyes is something like a challenge, and it never ends well if _Grog_ beats him to the punch.)

 

* * *

 

Fucking Grog Strongjaw is almost exactly like climbing a mountain; if you’re lucky, it won’t kill you before you conquer it.

 

* * *

 

 

Somehow, it doesn’t feel like losing, not really, not with the way the wall is cold on his back and he shudders into Grog’s body heat, sure of the man’s hold on his legs and hips. Not with the way his skin sparks and tingles under the drag of his beard -- _beards, always, always scruffy men, there’s no reason not to, really --_ and his breath catches in the wake of a nip, of teeth and fingernails.

He doesn’t want to think of how practiced he is, how half the stress in Grog’s shoulders seems to come from the weight of holding himself back, what that kind of control has to do to someone, to him.

“Let’s work on all that tension, yeah?” he breathes, because his mouth has always, always been faster than his brain, and it always will be, even here.

(Grog won’t complain about this later, or ever again, this disconnect between what Vax’s mouth does and what his mind knows better than to do. Vax, however, will learn.)

( _very quickly_ )

 

* * *

 

 

[epilogue]  


“Stop being a whineass,” Grog says, totally unharmed and completely unscathed, because of course he is, and his distance is the only thing keeping his arms from being scratched into ribbons.

(He’s done worse in less volatile fits of pique; the goliath is lucky he can’t reach him and the blink-back belt is … _Oh, gods, where did he throw it_ ? That was _expensive_!)

( _He sympathizes with Percival in the moment, a true understanding between men and the cruel unfairness of fate.)_

“Look,” he breathes, lying very, very still. “I have an idea. It’s a shit idea. But this is what we do.”

“I’m listening.”

“You throw me down the stairs --”

“I’m in!”

The world goes a little starry and black around the edges as Grog grabs him by the thighs -- _it feels less nice this morning_ \-- and hauls him up over his shoulder in a single move to carry him from the room into the hallway.

“What the -- _FUCK_ , _GROG_  ---”

“GROG!”

Pike’s shrill voice cuts through his panic, for the ten seconds it takes him to register the scene: Grog, indomitable, entirely nude and slinging an equally nude - much more domitable, he admits to himself, so very domitable - Vax’ildan over his arm with no effort. Vax, for his part, feels much like a bruised sack of potatoes, and quite imagines he looks it.

(but the finest sack of potatoes, with gold embroidery and imported from Whitestone itself.)

“Where are your clothes? Where -- Why is Vax naked! Put him down! What is going _on_?”

Vax prays.

Grog drops him, anyway.

Vax vows to make raven stew for a week.

(He thinks he hears Her chuckle, in the back of his mind. He’s glad she finds this funny, since she’s going to be out a Champion when this is over and he asks the War Cleric to take mercy and put him out of his misery.)

“I wasn’t gunna throw you down the _stairs_.” Grog gestures wide, looking over his shoulder. “Not really. ...Not all of ‘em. Look,” he turns to Pike, who seems entirely unperturbed by Grog’s nudity and more affronted by the variety of the shenanigans she just walked into, and continues, “Vax and I were sparrin’, and I got a little carried away, and now he’s all…”

Vax can’t see what he’s doing with his gestures from his painful sprawl on the floor, but he knows he’s offended by it. He’s always been perceptive like that.

“ _Anyway_ , you think you could heal him up, quick-like?”

“Sparring,” Pike says, slowly.

“Yeh,” Grog answers.

“Nak---. You know? I don’t want to know. I mean, _I know_ , but I don’t really want to, but I do, and I’m going to pretend I don’t, okay Vax?”

“Thank you, Pikey.”

“Okay. And we will _never_ speak of this _again_.”

**Author's Note:**

> I did not intend for Percy to be the secret third character to this, but it IS a Vax exploration, to be fair.


End file.
